Jet and Ebony fans in New Guinea

Caption: JET AND EBONY FANS IN NEW GUINEA: Leon Freeman of Memphis (wearing T-shirt) quickly made new friends among members of the Yatmul Tribe in Papua New Guinea by presenting them with issues of JET and EBONY Magazines. In the Kamanimbit Village he recently visited on his vacation, there were no TVs, telephones, radios or automobiles. "I was the first African-American that they had ever seen," he told JET. "The tribe wasn't discovered until 1950. They were fascinated by both magazines because the people in them looked like themselves. They had seen White foreigners, but not Blacks," he explained. Freeman, a retired drivers' education teacher in the Memphis school system, travels frequently and "I always carry EBONY and JET with me because I subscribe and they're so interesting." There were about 300 residents in the village. Some could speak English and everybody wanted one, he said. "I brought 25 EBONYs and 50 JETs. You would have thought they had been gold." The Independent State of Papua New Guinea sits in the southwest Pacific Ocean above Australia. Though the capital city of Port Moresby is modernized, the areas in the highlands where Freeman visited during his 10-day excursion are not. Called Melanesians, "They are a hunting and gathering society," he explained. "They don't use money; they trade, and they gave me so many handmade gifts. But if they did have money, I believe they would have bought a magazine," he chuckled.